IGPT, Invesco's AI and Next Gen Software ETF, ends the week with a notably different texture from the extreme call-dominated setup that drove the prior two notes: short interest has surged, borrowing costs have climbed, and options positioning has pulled back from its historic extreme toward something more neutral.
The most striking shift this week is on the short side. Short interest in IGPT has risen more than fivefold in a week, climbing from around 62,870 shares on September 21 to 328,510 by September 29, a 422% increase that takes the figure to 3.0% of the free float. That is still a modest absolute level for an ETF, but the pace of the build is unusual. Borrowing costs have moved in tandem: the cost to borrow has risen 20% over the week to 3.58%, double the level of a month ago. Availability has swung sharply too. After the lending market normalised dramatically last week, with availability briefly touching 164.9%, it has since tightened back to 90%, having been as snug as 19.3% during the mid-September squeeze. The borrow market is neither as loose as it was last Tuesday nor as tight as it was on September 18, but the direction of travel is clearly toward renewed pressure.
Options positioning has moved in the opposite direction to the short interest build, and that contrast is worth naming. The put/call ratio is now 0.0361, still close to historic lows and well below the 20-day mean of 0.065, but the z-score has eased to -1.37. A week ago it was approaching four standard deviations below average; the most extreme call skew of the past year has unwound by more than half. The 52-week low remains 0.0194, so call positioning still dominates by any reasonable measure, but the momentum of that bullish options signal has clearly faded.
The ORTEX short score sits at 50.9, having climbed from 43.4 on September 22 to its current level, a jump of roughly seven points in a week. That puts it squarely in the middle of the distribution rather than at any extreme, but the trend is toward increasing short pressure. The ETF itself is down 2.6% on the week to $101.44, despite adding 10.8% over the past month. The one-day bounce of 0.39% on September 29 suggests some stabilisation, but the weekly loss is the first meaningful pullback after a strong run. On the institutional side, the two largest holders as of June 30 were UBS Asset Management and Morgan Stanley, holding 5.97% and 5.03% respectively. Morgan Stanley added 119,143 shares in the quarter to June, a material build worth noting.
What to watch now is whether the short interest build continues to accelerate or stabilises: a sustained rise above 5% of float would shift this from a blip to a genuine positioning story, and whether the borrow market returns to the sub-20% availability levels seen in mid-September would be the clearest signal that pressure is building in earnest.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open IGPT on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
